


One Invincible Summer

by Acid



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child - Thorne & Rowling
Genre: Childhood Friends, First Kiss, First Love, Green Eyes, Grief/Mourning, Hogwarts, M/M, Muggle London, POV Scorpius Malfoy, Scars, Scorpius Malfoy & Albus Severus Potter Friendship, Tattoos, Trans Character, Trans Male Character, Wordcount: 5.000-10.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-30
Updated: 2020-08-30
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:27:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26187196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Acid/pseuds/Acid
Summary: Scorpius remembers his mother's lessons even when he feels alone, but then Al is there to share something special with him.
Relationships: Scorpius Malfoy/Albus Severus Potter
Comments: 7
Kudos: 40
Collections: Expelli-gender! 2020





	One Invincible Summer

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lumeleo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lumeleo/gifts).



> This was made over the course of one weekend as a pinch-hit for the following prompt: "Trans boy Scorpius and his loving boyfriend, please! All I ask is that they get a happy ending, bonus points for supportive dad Draco."
> 
> Thank you to H. without whom this would still be a jumble of words gathering virtual dust. Thank you, readers. Happy end of August. May this unexpected change of seasons treat you well.

"I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars."

_Walt Whitman_

* * *

"I see so much of your mother in you," Dad said at Mum's funeral. It was a confession, brief and broken.

Scorpius cringed and hated that with the way his brain worked, the admission hurt at first like a sting of a snapped shoelace even when Dad meant it solely as comfort. He let his shoulders droop and grew quieter and smaller. He did not give Dad a hug, even though Dad was hurting too. Right then, it felt as if he couldn't hug anyone ever again. All he could do is stand there, as helpless as a rocking statue about to be toppled. His lungs burned. His chest was tight. He couldn't take a breath, but not at all in the same way as in the Quidditch changing rooms, after adjusting a clingy strip of elastic fabric over his ribs after practice. This time, he truly knew he couldn't breathe no matter what he tried, he was incapable of it, stunned and stuck and still. Was this how insects felt, suspended on a pin behind a glossy frame, forever?

 _No, don't think of that. Don't think of Mum in that... box. Don't think of Dad's words. I'm still Scorpius. Dad knows I'm Scorpius. This isn't_ girly _, it's just Mum. We all miss Mum. It's OK for a bloke to look like his mum. Shut up, brain! Focus. I have to breathe and I must remember - everything, even from before, when Mum didn't call me Scorpius yet. It's far too precious to forget now._

Scorpius exhaled at the memory of the stars swirling over the ceiling of his childhood bedroom, at the smell of his mother's perfume, the feel of her hands brushing out the Manor's grass out of his hair after he had spent the day playing in the garden.

_"Let me tell you a story, darling. Long ago, our people could trace their legacies to the times of the ancients and honoured every grandfather and father and son for centuries with the elaborate paintings of their family trees, though only flowers bloomed to mark the lives of the rest of us. But people aren't flowers, they are people. For centuries they've built magical castles and concealed their homes to keep their families safe and while they lived on they named their children after the stars. They wielded powerful magic and strove to make their forefathers proud but it was their pride that led them astray. Evil seeped into what they've taught their children, and that evil was passed on, for generations, amplified until unspeakable darkness took over and became daily duty, became dogma -- look this word up in the dictionary tomorrow, love, and tell me what it means by dinnertime, all right? -- and so they taught their children to hate others who weren't like them. Time after time, they traded away the last crumbs of compassion for power. Until, one child was born to the parents who loved each other. A special child, who could end the cycle of hate. That child changed everything, shining brighter than any star can ever shine... do you know who that child was?"_

It was an old story with a familiar ending, the ending young Scorpius loved all the same. It was a story about him, before he knew himself. Constellations swirled over their heads on the magical ceiling: Draco, Corvus, Ursa Major. Scorpius.

Scorpius couldn't look, did not want to look at grandpa Lucius and grandmother Narcissa who, just half an hour ago, had sneered pointedly at the sight of Al standing by his side. That awful tapestry of Grandpa Lucius' (the one that Dad insisted ought to be moved away from the sitting room when Scorpius turned four) now showed Scorpius' name. Scorpius hated being on the side of the branch with names, just as he had hated being embroidered as a flower on it once. He'd almost prefer the tapestry to still consider him a flower now if it meant staying next to mum and keeping her company on that awful thing, but mum was not a flower either, never had been. She was like the green grass of the manor, now allowed to grow tall, to bend and flow with the wind. She was everything and everywhere, and there was no home without her. She had never been just one flower, and she had never occupied a room by existing namelessly alongside anyone in her life. It's good that Grandfather's tapestry was now folded with the plain side outwards and stashed far away in the left wing's windy cellar, never to be displayed on the wall for as long as Scorpius was here, or he would grab the nearest sword off the wall displays and start hacking the tapestry into ragged pieces, every single inch of what might as well be soaked in poison and bile beyond rescue.

_Mama, you were so strong for us. We'll never make it, not without you._

The pressure of Al's hand squeezing his was a welcome distraction. _Al's here, he's here with me. I've got Dad. I've got Al. They're still here._ Scorpius focused on that and let the stinging warmth turn into a trickle down his cheeks and then turned his face up to the sky and let the tears slide over his jaw and fall down over the tips of his polished boots. Crying was hardly proper. Malfoys didn't cry, grandpa used to say, but that was a great big lie, like many things Grandpa had said during family dinners. Everyone cried, probably even Grandpa Lucius. Once, when Mum was too sick to speak, Dad hid his face in Scorpius' hair and squeezed so tight, that Scorpius almost didn't feel the hot tap-tap-tap of Dad's tears. And yet Dad was the strongest Malfoy Scorpius had ever known, aside from Mum.

Aunt Daphne lifted her wand, levitating a bundle of holy grass over the casket, the first of many bouquets. Odd, wasn't it, how flowers on a summer's day could come to mean something different from joy?

It had been such a long summer that it felt like a year had gone by in one August. But even so, he was turning fourteen in a month. It felt unreal. Birthdays would never be the same without an owl bringing him a parcel with sweets from mum. S _weets, they always help you make friends,_ Mum used to say _._

 _Get as close to the grass as possible, Scorpius, so you can make out the stars,_ Mum also told him once. He tried it with Al, as they sunk into the sea of green: the backs of their heads pressed against the moist soil of the hillside and the tips of their ears were tickled by the stirring blades of grass and the occasionally shared secret. Overhead, the stars shone, countless and eternal, the brightest that Scorpius had ever remembered seeing.

There were no stars left in the sky now. The mist trailed in greying clumps and covered up the sun. So murky and grey the sky seemed that Scorpius doubted the sun would ever shine the same way as before.

Despite that worry, Scorpius breathed. He allowed his fingers to curl around Al's hand and then reached out to rest his hand on his dad's back. They were Malfoys and they, not Grandpa, got to decide what was proper for them and for now, in Scorpius' heart, Malfoy meant family and family meant wherever Scorpius went, Al came too. When it came to it, you couldn't spell Malfoy without 'Al'.

* * *

Scorpius was the oldest in his year, not that he looked it. His fifteenth birthday two years back had come and passed with a now-customary owl from Dad. The poor bird flew low, struggling to carry its burden, and finally dropped the biggest, gaudiest, broom-shaped parcel into his breakfast porridge in the Great Hall. 

Always at Scorpius' side, Al cheered as he wiped the splash of porridge off his cheek and then tried to do the same to Scorpius. "Whoa! Are you going to ride it?"

"Yes, I'll take you up on it if you want. Looks like it can carry two, easily."

"Oi, I've got my own, you know."

"This one's faster. Look! Ohh, wicked. Nimbus Nova, 2.0. Custom-etched! And just look at this!" Scorpius' hand hovered over the custom carving of a star caught on a grass blade, like the fine dot over an 'i', and then the final swirl of an 'a' in Astoria... _Mum._ Scorpius still had all of her letters from his first two years at Hogwarts. So Dad remembered her too, when it counted most. Somehow that meant the world to Scorpius, on this day that was no longer as simple as a mere joyful celebration.

The next year's birthday present was all books, a collection of them, the kind mother liked to read, according to the note from Dad. Although the gift did not appear as memorable as the broom at first glance, Scorpius, enchanted by what the next pages might hold, spent quite a few late evenings reciting Muggle verses to himself and then to Al, to the quiet crackling of the fireplace in their common room as the rest of their housemates had gone to sleep.

_  
_ _Roads go ever ever on,_

_Over rock and under tree,_

_By caves where never sun has shone,_

_By streams that never find the sea..._

Al voiced later that it was just as well that Scorpius' discovery of Muggle literature coincided with their sixth year at Hogwarts. They would have never gotten through anything more complicated than the ordinary end-of-the-year exams with their grades intact otherwise.

But now it was summer once again, and the summer hols were almost over. The cherished broom rested by Scorpius' side while the fantasy books that peacefully took over half of his bedroom remained there still. Scorpius and Al were camping out in the mossy grass, lush and soft, on the shady hillside behind the Manor after their unofficial Quidditch practice. Life was simple: just a well-worn quaffle making a dent in the dirt and two sweaty, broad-shouldered lads looking up at the twinkling stars, and Scorpius still couldn't believe the Potters let Al stay here with him for an entire week!

Scorpius thought of mum's grave marker, right past the line of those trees, by the garden. It was rather plain alongside the ancient Malfoy tombs, decorated with a couple of blades made up of finely etched grass stalks and a scant sprinkle of stars shining through them.

Scorpius grew taller and his body had changed: hips as thin as Al's now, chest flat and arms wiry. His new scars, as thin as those blades of grass, still itched now and then as the nerves regenerated with time. He scratched at the numb patch of his chest, lazily, noting that the edges of it were far more sensitive now than they had been before. The scars were practically flat now too, enough not to feel the ridges of them at all through the fabric of his shirt. The one on the right side was wider, probably from the time he had almost fallen off his broom messing around with Al, and used his dominant arm to hang on tight and climb back on. He had felt that stretch all the way from his elbow to his toes and it had only been, what, three months after the procedure back then? Enough to affect even the most expert work of the Head Healer.

At first, the house was so quiet after mum was gone. Scorpius felt like a ghost haunting the left wing as Dad dwelled in the library, in the laboratory, in the garden. For so long, they occupied different timelines even when Scorpius was home from Hogwarts: with Dad keeping late hours and marking time in cooling cups of tea, with Scorpius meeting the sunrise on his morning rides up over the Manor grounds. Scorpius used to collapse into his bed exhausted and cast a cleaning charm once in a while because magic was far easier than the routine of soap and water. He did not look in the mirror all that often, but one night he did and stepped back, horrified at the sight that wasn't him. He couldn't go on existing like that. He knew then he should have spoken up sooner, ignoring the issue just as his body changed, as he kept things bound, but when he let the bindings loose, stood in a robe in front of his dad and his voice faltered "I just want them gone, there's gotta be a way, a potion, a curse. Please, dad!" his father didn't berate him, didn't scold him either. ("Scorpius, is this what you need, son?" "Yes!" A thousand times yes!) Dad was the one to pull the strings too, with the healers at St Mungo's and with Scorpius' Head of Slytherin House, to allow Scorpius to recover at home a couple weeks longer once classes resumed again. Afterwards, Dad kept fussing over him with a new set of scar ointments and it felt nice, really nice to see Dad stern but caring, almost the way it was when Scorpius was young and Mum was around. They were no longer two ghosts occupying each other's spaces. They were a family still, through it all.

The doctors at St. Mungo's did a good job closing the incisions, and mostly you could hardly tell there were scars. Except on that right side, but it didn't really matter. Scars were cool, weren't they? At first, Scorpius was far too conscious that his left nipple was a quarter of an inch higher than his right one, but a slightly blushing Al rightly pointed out they were perfectly fine as they were -- great even! In all the ways casual asymmetry was apparently amazing -- and then ranted on about the common misconception of human bodies being perfectly symmetrical for a good five minutes after that. Al always did that exact passionate ranting thing whenever he felt shy, ever since they were kids. Silly sod.

"So, tomorrow, right?"

"Yeah, tomorrow! Bright and early."

"Hm, have you decided what yours is going to be?" Scorpius asked, gripping the worn handle of his Nimbus Nova.

Al smiled and nodded. "Yeah, I think I finally have."

"Are you going to tell me, you git?"

"Nope. Just get us there."

It was the perfect plan. Tomorrow at five am they would sneak out of the Manor and take the Knight Bus into Muggle London. The latter part of the plan was shady in Scorpius' mind, but it was clear enough that they'd need to charm their way into the Muggle tattoo parlour, and finally do what they've been planning on doing since their fourth year. They had to. They were running out of time before the classes began in their final year and waiting a year until their Hogwarts days were over... was, well, unthinkable. Life went on all around them, the best of it, passing them by. It had to be tomorrow! Or never.

What a daft rule it was, anyway: no tats until you turned eighteen! Scorpius wasn't turning eighteen until a few weeks into his last school year and it was bloody unfair, because it was so much harder to sneak away from Hogsmeade than it was from the Manor, especially all that way! And this wasn't even a wizarding tattoo, just plain old unenchanted ink, with no permanent spells or charmed contracts or even enchanted movement to the picture. It could be completely erased with the right spell in a heartbeat. Hell, his chest scars would probably be more noticeable than this! Anyway, he was practically eighteen and Al wasn't that much younger than him and very mature for his age and that was good enough, right? They could both now fool some Muggle bloke into thinking they were as old as Al's brother, that's for sure. The stupid git still acted like he was thirteen-and-a-half and a Hufflepuff, Al was cleverer on his worst day!

They had a good chance of success, anyway. Now that the collection of used-up Testosterone phials by Scorpius' bedside (charmed to glow an electric shade of blue and look like pixie skulls to anyone other than Scorpius' closest friends) had grown to fill the gigantic jar almost up to its neck. That meant his shots had some effect, and Scorpius had finally stopped trying to appear as tall as Al while squeaking at strangers like a twelve-year-boy up past his bedtime. "So not true thankyouverymuch!" He hadn't had to deal with bedtimes since he was five! But Al still got to skip shaving for a week and enjoy a visible shadow there on his upper lip and his chin. Scorpius wasn't jealous, not at all. (Alright, he was!) Why couldn't he have dark hair, like Mum or Aunt Daphne or Al? At this rate he won't be able to grow a proper beard until he turned thirty!

But forget beards or becoming practically ancient in some distant future. Tomorrow was far more important!

Scorpius had never been so curious about anything in his entire life. Why couldn't Al just tell him what his tat was going to be? Why couldn't Scorpius come up with any decent guesses about what it might be about? He'd known Al forever now. He ought to guess something as important as this in an instant, like they had always guessed each other's moves on the Quidditch Pitch. 

"Come on. What is it?"

"Guess," Al said. _Well, shit._

"Er. A snake," Scorpius said. It was as safe of a guess as any for a pair of Slytherin housemates.

"Ew," Al made a face. "I'm trying to make it through Hogwarts without lifelong trauma. I don't need a reminder of my Hogwarts House in the mirror by the time I'm as old and wrinkled as the Headmistress. Save that for the University!"

"Heh, fair enough. Alright, I got one. It's perfect!"

"What?"

"Wait for it..."

"Scorpius, seriously? Come on..."

"Mmm... Your dad's scar. So the Prophet can have even more fun stalking you for photos!"

Al shoved him into the grass and they rolled, all pointy elbows and knobby knees, legs kicking, Al's thumbs sharp and ticklish against Scorpius' sternum. 

"Hey, you asked," Scorpius spit out between bouts of laughter, struggling for breath with Al's full weight on top of him. "You did ask!"

"I did! Damn you."

Fresh summer grass invaded everything as it usually did. It clung to Scorpius' clothing and hair, to Al's untamed mane. Scorpius lifted his hand and plucked a grass blade stuck to Al's cheek, cautious as lifting a feather.

"Hm?" Al did something that made Scorpius think of a nuzzling pup and then froze, mid-movement. 

"You have something on your face," Scorpius blurted out as a way of explanation. "Right here." All around them the summer grass flowed like the sea under the soft breeze and smelled so flagrantly of summers yet to come.

* * *

For a while there, Scorpius was unsure whether his tattoo was the right thing to get. He knew the placement of it and the shape, down to the last line, and the colour could not be anything but the deepest of greens with just a splatter of silvery white. Muggles could make their tattoos different colours, couldn't they? He'd glimpsed a great big colourful one, full sleeve, on a bloke in a Muggle pub once.

Scorpius just wanted a small one. Not many colours at all. 

"Are you sure you're eighteen," the tattoo artist, Susie, squinted at him and asked. Even Confounded, she was a bright one.

"Nineteen," Scorpius lied through his teeth as he counted out the Muggle banknotes. "Do you want to see my ID again? Besides, er, I'm trans. Us blokes tend to look younger than we actually are." Muggles had trans people too, didn't they? How could they not _._ Sometimes it was easier to just get that part out of the way than explain his scars when it came to it. She'd get to stare at his chest soon enough, and he didn't want to make up a story about his wild encounter with death and danger as a baby, not this time around anyway.

"Huh," she shrugged. "Got a cousin who's trans, came out last year. Stayed with us until they mended things over with their parents again. Took awhile. Family drama, you know. I reckon it's the same everywhere you go."

"Yeah," Scorpius nodded even though the Manor had been so quiet and drama-free, sometimes Scorpius wanted to scream to fill the silent void with something other than Dad's quiet presence. He cherished every time he heard Dad laugh. "I've got my dad, but he's actually all right. Everyone knew before I was five. Mum knew first. When she was still alive." And then he swallowed down his reluctance and his fear of this Muggle stranger that Grandfather would pay less attention to than a weed off the garden path and admitted something personal, something private. "The tattoo is for her."

A sorrowful and soft expression settled over Susie's face. She lifted the sleeve of her shirt where an untattooed patch of skin of her shoulder surrounded a small crow in flight. "That's for my mum. She was gone before I finished school, but she did encourage me to study art. And that was the right thing to do, let me tell you! Can't imagine doing anything else! Mum knew it, even when I didn't know myself."

Scorpius stared at the outline of a bird and somehow all the colourful designs on Susie's forearms faded in comparison to that one simple shape. "I was thirteen," he confessed. "She didn't really tell me to pick up a trade. Mostly, I think she wanted me to be less of a cock up than my grandfather was."

"Well, lad, you're nineteen now and out of the closet, and in Camden getting a tattoo, I'd say you're doing all right so far," Susie smiled and patted his shoulder. "Shame about your grandpa though. All right then. Show me what you've got. As we discussed, I don't tattoo roses or names or initials. No writing at all. Animals are OK. And look, I usually don't allow visitors in the room, but if you want, ask your boyfriend to come in..."

Scorpius blinked. "Um. Definitely no roses, and Al's not my... I mean... Er, he's my best friend and he's..." _Family. Everything. Just Al!_ He winced at the distant groan from the other room. _Was that Al? Did it hurt? Do I need to check on him?_ "Um, he's also getting a tattoo, I don't want to interrupt that! OK, look," he stumbled over the explanation and at the end changed the subject by pointing at the drawing he brought with him because he really wasn't sure what else to say about Al. "I want it exactly like this, on my side. Right here." He pulled up his shirt.

Susie smiled at him and studied the sketch on a plain sheet of paper handed to her. After a moment she nodded. "Yeah, I think I can do this. You have to tell me if you need to add in more than black or green."

Scorpius thought of the hillside behind the Manor, the sea of green in the summer, the kind of fragrant sea you can dive into and nearly drown in. He thought of Al's stares, the really intense ones when Al grew quiet and watched the skies. Or when he met Scorpius' eyes when they were alone. "Just green, maybe a bit of silver."

"White accent then. You will have to touch it up in a few years. It'll fade faster than the rest." 

Scorpius nodded. "That's fine. Go for it."

Later, he held onto the edge of the chair as Susie's needle pierced his skin and breathed through it. He'd thought it would hurt more, without magic, but this was OK. He could definitely do this. Just one more inch, one more line.

Over an hour, no more than two. The making of his tattoo was almost as long as Mum's funeral had been, one and a half hours and all the years in between that led him here to the decision to put something permanent, with an instrument wielded by a Muggle stranger, into his skin.

Mum always said that people carried magic with them regardless of whether they had wands or could cast spells. Only sometimes it was a different kind of magic. Scorpius thought he understood now what she had meant so long ago.

He glossed over Susie's strict instructions on the tattoo aftercare, shoved a bottle of antibiotic ointment in his pocket, and then, once she stepped out the door, cast a quick healing charm under the dressing. _Oof._ He winced at the sticky plaster. That wouldn't be needed for long.

The reality began to sink in only as Al emerged from the other side of the tattoo parlour with an identical sheet of dressing taped to his side and the biggest grin of his life.

_We did it. We really did._

* * *

"Ohshit. My dad's going to kill me!" Scorpius screamed his new reality over and over as the rush of getting a tattoo in the middle of Muggle London finally faded and the thought of consequences sank in. But his tattoo was nothing like Dad's always-covered-up arm, the one Scorpius never got to see up close. Maybe he didn't have to worry about Dad at all. For all he knew, Al's dad was going to kill him first for letting poor impressionable Al -- _poor and impressionable my arse!_ \-- get something as outrageous as a tattoo! He could just picture it: _reduced to a pile of ash on the spot by the one and only Harry Potter, but what a way to go!_

They were both still alive and free. Undiscovered. Scorpius winced and scratched at the side of his chest. Oh, but those Muggle gadgets stung, even as a memory! _Three cheers for Al's Healing Charms._ _Al is better at those than me._

On the way back to Wiltshire, with the back seat of the Knight Bus lit only by a casual Lumos glinting at the tip of Al's wobbly wand, Scorpius pulled up his shirt, showing off the result of their Saturday escapade fully. Just like he intended for so long, three grass blades, green as their House banner, stretched along Scorpius' ribs, with a sprinkle of silvery dotted stars among them. The one right below the natural bend of his older scar had a matching gentle curl to it, like the last stroke of a letter 'a', a curlicue at the ending of a witch's name. Scorpius liked that letter a lot, now that his name lacked it and the discomfort at remembering that it was once there had long faded. For many years now, for most of his life, A stood only for Astoria, and for Al.

Both were now etched forever into his skin. As close as one got to his heart. Wherever she was now, Scorpius hoped that mum would approve of how he had chosen to remember her.

"Wow. May I?" A gentle touch of Al's hand over his ribs made Scorpius' breath catch. Al's eyes were all dark and green, greener than any grass in summer. And then his hand was gone.

"Hey!" Al murmured as his hand fumbled with the buttons of his shirt.

"Hm?" Was Al just nervous or...

"Want to see mine?" Al volunteered.

 _Not nervous then. Um... Should I stop staring? I probably should. But I want to see!_ Scorpius couldn't look away from the span of Al's bare chest, as Al actually unbuttoned that silly patterned shirt of his that he had worn so often since last year, the one with ferret faces stamped all over that made Dad cringe especially hard at the walking fashion disaster Al had been ever since Al's mum stopped choosing his clothes for him. Someone really had to step in and help one of these days, but Scorpius had grown to like the ferret fashion disaster far too much.

And then the shirt was secondary, leaving Scorpius' thoughts as soon as it parted. His eye was drawn to the expanse of bare skin and afterwards... not.

_Oh wow._

Scorpius blinked in surprise, because it was so unexpected and so simple. Something that wasn't there before. Something that belonged there now. A statement. Al's truth.

On the right side of Al's chest stretched what looked an awful lot like Scorpius' scar, the exact shape and width of it anyway, only not faded pink but blindingly, unapologetically rainbow-coloured, the entire spectrum from bright red to deep purple, as if, in a single swipe of a sharp claw, the disguise of Al's skin was pulled away to reveal the harder, shinier interior, like a beetle's wing.

 _Wow. Bloody hell, Al!_ Scorpius sat back, stunned and breathless. He had known Al was queer, it was hard to miss and there was a rainbow badge pinned to his Slytherin banner since their second year but still, seeing it like that, was a confirmation of what Al was. _Of what I am. Of what we both are._

"There," Al said, grinning and spreading out his elbow to bump Scorpius' with it. "Now we match."

There were so many things about Scorpius and Al that matched already: their height, when standing face to face, so close that their knees would touch, now made them equals. The length of their palms as they once pressed them one against the other for comparison was nearly identical, and their shared love of summers spent in one another's company was certainly the same.

And yet, as always, Scorpius rejoiced at the thought of one more thing they had in common.

It was not how Scorpius had planned it, not with the dubious privacy of a rocky Knight Bus ride breezing through the London streets, mid-squeeze past the Muggle transport, not with the night air rushing through an open window and hitting them with the unfamiliar smell of Muggle petrol and hot tarmac, and not with Celestina Warbeck on the radio, belting out the infamous ' _beat back those Bludgers, boys, and chuck that Quaffle here_ ' yet again, but Scorpius couldn't help it. It was only right to do this, right now, in case this was the only perfect night of their lives for the rest of their existence. In case he didn't get to do this again or ever. In case neither of them took that chance.

He leaned forward, into Al's easy hold, and concentrated on the simple act of keeping air in his lungs for just a moment. What could be easier? He only had to inhale and hold it in. And then, uncertain as any youth carrying his heart on his sleeve for the first time, Scorpius tilted his head and angled their lips just so until they met their match, as they hadn’t yet done before.

 _Just remember to breathe,_ he reminded himself. _And remember to hold onto every second. That's it. Just breathe and remember. I can do this. I've done this before and it all turned out OK._

He didn't react to Al's explanation of his tattoo until a long, panicked second had passed and their lips were no longer pressed together, and the wonder of Al's mouth was no longer parting under his lips but still, here Al was. Right here. In his arms.

"Yes, Al." _Yes and forever!_ "Yes, we do."

* * *

  
  


Roads go ever ever on,

Under cloud and under star.

Yet feet that wandering have gone

Turn at last to home afar.

Eyes that fire and sword have seen,

And horror in the halls of stone

Look at last on meadows green,

And trees and hills they long have known.

_J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings_


End file.
